By Judy Ogutu and Isaiah Lucheli
The special court on constituency boundaries and names disputes removed the last barrier to elections through what can easily pass as judicial Solomonic Wisdom.
The five-judge bench retained all the 80 new constituencies as they are, along with the names of the total 290 constituencies.
But they at the same ruled in favour of lawyers seeking change of some electoral ward names and transfer of some of these smaller representation units to the neighbouring constituencies.
But what will go down in Kenya’s judicial history is how the judges killed any further litigation that could delay the coming elections by giving their ruling on the last day within which the Constitution allows the boundaries to be contested.
What it means, therefore, is that the Judges gave a ruling that would go unchallenged on the basis of time lapse, since it was given on the last day of the 90-day window.
This means that the Independent Electoral and Boundaries Commission ( IEBC) can now go ahead with voter registration and allocation of polling stations, since it is now clear which ward is in which constituency and what the final names of the wards and constituencies will be.
It had been impossible for IEBC to plan for the elections because of the 137 cases lodged against the creation of the new constituencies that were early this year announced by the polls body.
The team led by Mr Isaack Hassan will now roll out its election progragme that would culminate in elections in March next year without fear of any further inhibition.
This includes voter registration in all the 290 constituencies, which all retained the names they had been given, and also compilation of a voter register that would be used in Kenya’s first national poll under current constitution.
The key feature of the coming elections is the devolved model of governance that comes with the elective positions of senator and governor for each of the 47 Counties, as well as women representatives for each of the units.
High Court Judges Mohamed Warsame, Ruth Sitati, Pauline Nyamweya, Hellen Omondi and David Majanja sat for more than eight hours as they read the 364 paged judgment in turns.
